The fact that this was originally published during pride month was happenstance. How does that meme go? A surprise to be sure, but a welcome one. The weird thing to me about pride flags is that they’re supposed to be inclusive, but it’s displayed by separating everyone out into smaller and smaller groups. I don’t know if that makes sense. I know what I’m trying to say, but I’m not sure if these words mean what they mean to everyone else what they mean to me. It’s like inclusivity via segregation. I guess the desire to categorize everything into its smallest possible units is just a trait humans share regardless of orientation. We love modifiers. I doubt there’s ever going to come a day where we don’t want to ad modifiers to all our descriptors. In any case I liked putting in all the bright colors.

is that a flag with pi on it? i can name four of the flags and have seen the other two before but can’t place them. i think one might be the pan flag (the one above the pi one) but i don’t have any guesses as to the pi one.

This might be incorrect, but- I think the pi symbol, [and also the word for that symbol…pi?], are a symbol[s] for people who are polyamorous, aka these are the symbol[s] for people who like + do polyamory. My apologies to all people who are polyamorous, and to any other people, if my above information is incorrect.

I get what you’re saying, or trying to say rather, but being someone in the community that has several flags representing me as a whole, and having heard everyone else’s views on the matter. It’s more of a “I have a very specific subset of identity and I don’t feel that many people will understand. I’d also like to be able to find others like me so here’s a thing representative of my identity that is recognizable for others like me to find and relate to as well as find each other.” it doesn’t actually separate us, just makes it easier to find people with similar identities and experiences find each other. What actually causes exclusivity between us is…is another story. I don’t want to get into that bag of worms because it’s Pride month and it’s already pretty hard on certain groups (I am unfortunately apart of) who are often excluded, bullied, and purposefully erased within and outside the community year round to have that aggressively increased in the month of June by 1000.

That’s a fair way of saying it. I look at it like the different communities are all now basically all allied together because the outside communities look at them as one group anyway. Like the US, they are more than one group or state allied for a greater purpose and safety. In the US, every state has a flag to represent their way of life, so why can’t there be multiple flags for people who identify differently?

It’s not SEGREGATION as much as it’s saying, “Hey, I’m TRANS/BI/GAY/ACE and I am proud of who I am.” And it’s awesome (to me anyway) that they all can identify without having to use one specific flag to do so.

Plus, as my gay friend said to me the other day, “It’s FLAGS, and god damn it, gay and queer people love flags! We can’t have enough color or cloth!”

In the early 2000’s, he asked me to help him carry the flag in our Pride parade here, and I thought, “Why not? He’s my friend.”

Then when we were standing there, I got a few comments and invitations, and he would tell them “Oh, he’s straight, sweetie. But he’s such a great friend to to be here.” And it was somewhat bizarre for me, because they were like “Ooooo, a tolerant straight friend!” like I was some sort of rare animal. Well, I knew there weren’t a lot of people who came out in support, so I was definitely rare there, but it just felt odd that there weren’t MORE straight people supporting their LGBTQ friends so I stood out like a sore thumb.

It’s always been odd to me that we can’t just be accepting of the way people are, and let people alone who aren’t breaking the law or doing something dangerous. Last year someone said that being gay was dangerous – to other people. And I was like, “Are you really that retarded? Are you that insecure of your sexual orientation that you feel like you might be infected?” I then annoyed them until they went away.

It took me forever to figure out I was bi, in part because I kept thinking of bi as halfway between straight and gay, and that didn’t seem right, but also because I’m grey ace and aromantic, so the descriptions of “gay” and “bi” didn’t really seem to fit me. Having labels, hearing life experiences that mirrored my own was transformative. So yeah, I’m under the queer umbrella, but it’s a relief to be able to parse that further. Humans like being able to describe things.

I think the point is not to divide, but to celebrate diversity. LGBTQIA+ is not a monolith, but a coalition of groups with a wide variety of identities and experiences. In the same way as a festival celebrating multiculturalism might highlight the large number of individual cultures that feed into a specific society, and the foods, traditions, arts, etc that they have to offer, pride seeks to celebrate the diversity of the community rather than lumping everyone under a single monolithic identity. I think it is very possible to simultaneously celebrate unity and diversity.

In addition, as Momo touched upon above, there are a number of groups such as the bisexual, pansexual, asexual, aromantic, genderqueer, or nonbinary communities that often suffer from invisibility, erasure, or active attempts at exclusion, and these groups can really benefit from a flag to rally around, find each other, and make ourselves visible.

While I agree with what both Momo and Hypercube said (in that I have seen this happen – luckily it’s not something I’ve had to deal with myself) to me as a transgirl it felt more like a way to, in a time when you yourself are having trouble figuring out exactly who you are, facilitate your search for identity.

I totally agree with the peeps that have talked about why the flags are a good thing. It’s absolutely awesome that people can find each other and feel like they aren’t alone. You don’t even necessarily need to speak to someone, just seeing someone wearing your flag, whether it be on a pin or a patch or what have you, is just a nice reminder that your experiences aren’t isolated, there are others who get it and get you.

However, I do agree that we divide too much. It creates tension where there doesn’t need to be any. The difference between being Pansexual and being Bisexual, for instance, is so, so minor. There isn’t a line there just a blurry blob where everything mixes together. But because people want to be distinct and want things to be either one thing or another for the sake of simplicity, it’s caused people to make up arbitrary differences that don’t actually exist.

The Gatekeeper types don’t help any either. They never help, though, regardless of what they are gatekeeping.

Well the thing is, gatekeeping created divides between certain sexualities in the first place. Specifically bi and pan. But also, I don’t think it’s fair to say there is no real difference between them when the definitions make it clearly defined as to what is different and how people are experiencing those differences.

Gatekeepers in anything – fandoms, racial groups, the LGBTQ community – are always either too lenient or too exclusive. And they always seem to do more damage than good by eventually distorting the purity of something.

Just as an example, the jocks and nerd/geek cliques of my youth. The Jocks would be so exclusive of their clique that it made people who were on the fence either try too hard or join the Nerds. Look how that turned out – the Nerds now outnumber the Jocks that they feel threatened and can only lash out weakly at nerdy activities. And the Nerd/Geek cliques are becoming equally disgusting at excluding others that they are harming their own cause and hobbies.